


May History Remember Us

by KChan88



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Barricade Day, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24556906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChan88/pseuds/KChan88
Summary: The night before Lamarque's funeral, Jean Prouvaire leaves letters for his friends.An ode to friendship, hope in the face of oppression, and the cities rebellions call home.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 32





	May History Remember Us

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for heavy content and also mentions of cholera, which I feels needs mentioning at this particular moment.

Jean Prouvaire hears the quiet. He feels it in his bones.

There’s always a hush, before the chaos. A calm before the storm. Peace, before blood. It’s the way of things.

And he expects there will be blood, tomorrow.

He doesn’t _know_ , he only feels it, and he’s inclined to trust his feelings, after all. It’s the wont of a poet.

He slips the letters he wrote inside his bag, counting them one by one. He leaves the eighth on the table for Bahorel, who will be by in a short while, set to stay the night. He goes out the door, not bothering to lock it because Bahorel probably doesn’t have his key. He takes his favorite, most treasured journal too, on a whim. He doesn’t know why he has the whim, but he listens.

He gives his portress a wave as he goes down the stairs, and she looks back at him with a fond shake of her head, used to his odd hours. The street speaks as he steps outside, fractured memories spilled out across the paving stones. He feels them there. The other revolutions. The small rebellions. The insurrections. Everything. He sees them, images curling up into the air. Memories that don’t belong to him, but to Paris itself. Sounds of the past echoing in his ears. Tears of anguish. Shouts of victory. A crack of gunfire. All of it.

Theirs will not be the first. It won’t be the last. It will be one among the many convulsions of humanity, and their demands for justice.

He just doesn’t know if it will be progress, or tragedy, or something in-between.

Only tomorrow, only the choices made hours from now, will determine that.

Nothing is set.

He feels darkness on the wind. Death. But then, there is a funeral tomorrow. The funeral of a great republican hero. Death is everywhere now, with the cholera, so how is he to sort out the difference when the city is smeared with it?

Perhaps a great light will burst over the horizon and wash away the sludge of disease, and the government who cares not for the poor it affects the most.

He puts his hand in his pockets, feeling something deep down at the bottom. Dead flower petals, he realizes upon pulling his hand out, leftover from a rose he found lying in the street. Dropped, no doubt, from a bouquet taken to someone’s wife or lover. He couldn’t bear to leave it there, but the tattered stem broke off in his hand, and he put the rest in his pocket.

He must have forgotten to take it out.

He goes to Combeferre’s first.

He pulls out the letter as he approaches the familiar building.

_To Combeferre, our Guide. Our Brilliant Philosopher._

Except when he arrives at the door, preparing to slide the letter beneath, he doesn’t just hear Combeferre.

He hears Courfeyrac and Feuilly too.

“If they don’t arrest us tomorrow for the inevitable barricade, they’ll arrest us for the sheer amount of pistols you have, Combeferre!” Courfeyrac exclaims.

“Shhh, Courfeyrac,” Combeferre protests, though there’s a wry laugh on his breath. “These walls aren’t so thick.”

Feuilly laughs, too, and Jehan can practically see him shaking his head. “Where’s Enjolras? You were expecting him, weren’t you, Combeferre?”

“I was,” Combeferre says, a touch of concern in his voice. “He ought to be here soon.”

“While we wait,” Courfeyrac adds, with the air of one who is about to ask the same question he’s already asked before to no avail. “You will tell me where you got that sword, Feuilly.”

“If I did that,” Feuilly replies, and Jehan hears warm teasing in the words. “It would ruin the mystery.”

“Jehan does always say you are the best at keeping secrets,” Courfeyrac says, a slight whine in his voice. “Though why you would like to tease me, I don’t know.”

Jean Prouvaire laughs softly under his breath, pulling out two more letters.

_To Courfeyrac. Our Center, Whose Warmth and Love Keeps Us Together._

_To Feuilly, Whose Principles, Cosmopolitan Enthusiasm, and Intelligence Inspires Us All._

He slides the three letters beneath the door, only hearing a “did you hear something?” before dashing down the stairs and out of the building. The surprise and the mystery are part of the point, after all.

He goes to Joly’s next, where he fully expects to find Bossuet, also. He steps close to the door when he arrives, smiling at the correctness of his prediction.

“We ought to get breakfast tomorrow, before things ah…heat up,” Bossuet’s saying, and Jehan hears the amused smile even if he can’t see it. “Some preliminary gaieties, so to speak. We’ll bring Grantaire along, if he can be convinced.”

“I wish he’d accepted our invitation to come tonight,” Joly complains, sounding worried and also quite stuffy, giving a great sniff before Musichetta, who must also be inside, tuts, and says something like _take a handkerchief, you silly man, you’re a physician._

“Has anyone ever told you you’re the most beautiful woman in existence?” Joly asks, once he’s done blowing his nose.

“Hmm,” Musichetta says over the soft sound of Bossuet’s laughter. “You have, certainly. And Bossuet. You both ought to tell me once more, before you go off to Lamarque’s funeral tomorrow, and get into scuffles.”

Something sad, some kind of foreboding, swoops through Jehan’s stomach even as he smiles, pulling two more letters out of his bag.

_To Joly, Our Sweet Scientist, Whose Resilience Brightens Every Day_

_To Bossuet, Our Eagle, Who Always Has a Laugh and a Smile to Spare_

Prouvaire rests a hand on the door before he slides the letters beneath, running his fingers down the wood like he’s leaving a piece of his spirit behind for his friends.

He goes to Grantaire next, who lives not far from Joly’s. He hesitates outside this door, because he doesn’t hear anything on the other side.

Grantaire is alone.

Or Grantaire is not here, out finding some way to divert from his sorrows.

Prouvaire’s about to hope for the best and leave the letter when he hears something shatter and someone say _dammit, my wine_.

He is home, then. He’s alone, and he need not be, as Prouvaire just heard. But he’s always been one of them and not, all at once. Perhaps that will change, tomorrow. Prouvaire hopes so. Grantaire knows everything there is to know about Paris, and Prouvaire counts him as a dear friend, but he can’t say Grantaire doesn’t frustrate him, from time to time. Jehan throws himself into things with his entire heart. His soul. Grantaire only does that with them, and yet separates himself even still, by never taking part in the sacred thing that binds them all together.

He wishes he could lend some of his belief to Grantaire.

_To Grantaire, My Dear Friend,_ the letter says, _May Your Belief Come to You. You Are One of Us._

This leaves Enjolras.

Given Enjolras wasn’t at Combeferre’s and given Combeferre seemed to be expecting him, Prouvaire doesn’t bother going to Enjolras’ rooms. No, he goes to the river instead, which is very nearby. He’s not sure what leads him there other than pure instinct, some kind of foreknowledge he doesn’t know why he possesses. A dark, velvet sky closes in around Paris, and there are no stars, tonight. There’s only the light of the full moon breaking through the cloud cover, and the faint yellow of the streetlamps.

He finds Enjolras by the Seine.

Enjolras seems to expect him, though neither of them say so. Paris, the world itself, feels less filled-in tonight. Less real, as if they’ve ascended to some other plane just for now, before they plunge back into reality tomorrow. Even time feels slow, and Prouvaire is grateful for it.

He needs all the time he can get.

Something’s coming. He knows something’s coming.

“Jehan,” Enjolras says with a tender softness that makes Prouvaire’s soul ache. “What are you doing out so late?”

Prouvaire mirrors Enjolras, resting his arms on the edge of the stone bridge going across the river, devoid of anyone but them.

“Tending to some business before tomorrow,” Jehan answers, pulling out the last letter from his bag. “I don’t want anything unsaid, should things not go the way we hope.”

_To Enjolras, My Burning Bright Star. My Friend. My Chief._

Enjolras takes the letter, smiling and shaking his head a little at the use of _chief_ , Jehan suspects. There might be some tears glimmering in his eyes, or it might be the moonlight. “I understand, he says. “You’ve been to see our friends?”

Prouvaire nods. “Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Feuilly were together, wondering where you were. I thought you might be here, when I realized you weren’t there.”

Enjolras quirks an eyebrow in an uncanny impression of Combeferre. “You knew I’d be here?”

“I know you like some time to calm your mind. The city was speaking to me, I think, and I listened. And here you are.”

Enjolras tucks the letter into the inside of his coat, somehow knowing it’s meant to be read away from the person who wrote it. “You listen better than any of us, I think.” He pauses, gazing around at the city cloaked in night. At the blue-black water of the Seine, dappled silver in places where the moon breaks through the cloud cover. “What do you hear, tonight?”

Prouvaire takes his time answering, moving his hand to grasp Enjolras’ atop a crack in the bridge’s façade.

“Rage,” Prouvaire begins. “Pain. Anguish. Illness.” He grips Enjolras’ hand tighter. “Death.”

Enjolras keeps a firm hold of Prouvaire too, like he feels the same things deep down in his soul. Disease has crept across Paris, exposing all the iniquities. The violence that has nothing to do with firing a gun or building a barricade. They’ve all felt, it, the past few months, and Lamarque’s death is the match that might light a fire.

“I feel the hope, too,” Prouvaire continues. “I hear it buzzing beneath the ground. I hear it in the city itself. This home of ours. And that will always be true, whatever happens tomorrow. Whether the people rise or not.” He closes his eyes and he _listens_ and he swears he hears the heartbeat of this city all around him. “Paris is always with us, you know.”

Enjolras still doesn’t answer, staring out across the river again at nothing. Or perhaps something Prouvaire just can’t see, but then, perhaps he does.

“You can tell me what you’re thinking, Enjolras.” Prouvaire runs a finger over the top of Enjolras’s hand. “It’s not a betrayal to your commitment to have fear. The secret is we’re all afraid. But that’s what courage is. Acting anyway.”

Enjolras looks back at Prouvaire with a particular kind of smile on his face. A secret, sad smile. “I worry what people will say of us, later. Next week. Next year. Next century. I fear they will not understand that our violence is born out of the violence enacted upon us. History’s judgement always comes down on those who rebel, and not enough on those who oppress. They twist it, to tell their own story. I want the story to be ours.”

Enjolras’ hand is shaking, and Prouvaire moves closer, taking it and holding it against his chest.

“It will be,” he whispers. “I promise you, Enjolras. It will be.”

Prouvaire doesn’t know how he knows, he simply does.

He closes his eyes again, seeing drops of blood on the paving stones. Barricades. Smoke. He hears gunfire and shouts and he doesn’t know if he’s hearing the past or the future or tomorrow itself. But he hears it. He sees it.

He keeps Enjolras’ hand, pulling out the last remaining thing in his bag.

His journal. The journal where he keeps memories of his friends. Poems he wrote about them and their society. Bits of prose he wrote in the middle of the night as Paris breathed with rage and grief all around him. On nights when the light of the stars offered no relief, and all he could do was write, feverishly, until the sun rose and he could breathe again, longing longing longing for the brightness.

“This is full of…stories, so to speak,” Prouvaire tells Enjolras, pressing a kiss to his hand before finally releasing it. “Stories about us. What we’re fighting for. I’m taking it with me, tomorrow, and if…” he swallows, a tremble in his voice he isn’t afraid to let Enjolras hear. “If something happens, I hope someone will find it.”

Something heavy drops from his chest down to the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t know what. Foreboding. Anticipation.

Enjolras takes the leather-bound volume from Prouvaire’s hand. “May I?” he asks, gesturing at the cover.

Prouvaire nods, and it feels like he’s handing a piece of his soul over, but if there’s anyone in the world he can trust with that, it’s surely Enjolras.

“An Ode to My friends…” Enjolras says, very soft as he runs a single finger over the ink. “May history remember us, and may those who come after carry the torch should we fall.”

Enjolras _is_ crying now.

“I see blood on my hands, Jehan.” His voice, that voice that sounds like an ancient hymn bubbling up from the beneath the ground, cracks. “I see it, and it hasn’t even begun.”

Prouvaire puts his hands on Enjolras’ face, and his friend shuts his eyes, some of the tension easing. “I know, Enjolras. I know, and I understand.”

He doesn’t need to say what he understands, because it’s already understood. The blood is a part of this. The loss. The hard things done to forge a new world because there are not other options. Not yet. And Enjolras is willing to take all of those things onto his shoulders, willing to do things he would not ask of even the rest of them.

“My name can turn to ash, and that would be all right,” Enjolras whispers. “But I want the world to remember what happens tomorrow. To remember all of you.”

“They will.” Jehan sucks in a breath, feeling like there might be a rip in his heart, somewhere. “I promise you they will. Whatever they say, the truth is in these pages and it will live on. Someone will remember us. As long as we live on in the hearts of one person, as long as one person remembers us, we live on. A single spark, as I’ve heard you say.”

Enjolras smiles, easing a little light into the darkness. “Yes. I have said that. I hope with every piece of myself that people are with us, tomorrow. But if not…” he confesses that fear into the night, and it hangs heavy between them. Enjolras doesn’t give up, he scrapes through the darkness with his bare hands to find the light, but they could fall, tomorrow, and there’s no need to pretend otherwise. “I will trust in the storytellers, in people like you, to know that we were fighting to bring new life to the world, however bloody the sunrise. And perhaps…well perhaps one day the sunrise will just be golden, instead. Combefere hopes so.”

“You ought to go to him,” Prouvaire says, taking his hands away from Enjolras’ face. “They’ll be wondering where you’ve gotten to.”

Enjolras tucks a piece of his over-long fair hair behind his ear and squeezes Jean Prouvaire’s hand once more, before disappearing into the night.

Prouvaire waits a moment before heading back home, taking a long, depth breath of the Parisian air. This city is his home. His life. And tomorrow, for not the first time or the last, it will change.

He walks slowly home, keeping his hand on his bag that still holds the journal. He should sleep and he knows it, but still, he may add some things, before Morpheus steals him away.

“There you are,” Bahorel says as he comes inside, and he’s a little softer than usual, a little less jolly. He holds up his own letter. “You made me cry, Jean Prouvaire. It’s terribly rude of you. I never do, after all.”

The envelope lays on table, reading, _To Bahorel, Whose Laughter Lights Up My World._

Prouvaire puts his bag down, going over to stretch out across the small sofa in his sitting room, his head resting on Bahorel’s legs. “Please. You cry at the theater. It’s not a surprise you would cry at a letter of mine. I would have been insulted if you had not.”

“Were you out delivering more to our unsuspecting friends?”

Jehan nods. “Most of them were together, except Grantaire. And Enjolras, who I found by the river. I sent him to Combeferre.”

“The firebrand himself,” Bahorel mutters fondly. “I do wish I could get him to borrow one of my red waistcoats, it would suit, I think.”

Silence falls between them, and Prouvaire confesses his own fear into the quiet like Enjolras did earlier.

“Bahorel?”

“Yes, Jehan?”

“If something happens to me…”

“Jean Prouvaire.”

Prouvaire sits up, taking Bahorel’s hands and looking him in the eyes with a fierceness that stops any arguments. “If something happens to me, and you can manage it, take my journal off my body, and make sure it’s safe. I demand you say yes, or I shall be upset with you. You know what it means to me.”

Finally, Bahorel nods. “I promise to not let any fool soldier touch it, to the best of my ability, sweet poet. They aren’t ready for _me_ , in any case.”

Jehan laughs and lays back down on Bahorel’s legs, waiting for morning to come, and hoping hoping _hoping_ it isn’t his last tomorrow. 

* * *

After the blood and the rage and the smoke and the gunfire, comes the quiet.

The eerie, desolate, tragic quiet.

Cities are not quiet. By their nature they are noisy places, delightful in their chaos.

The silence is unnerving. Every sound echoes, louder than it ought to be.

The working women of Paris walk into this silence, because the city must go on, whatever the tragedy.

Some are there searching for loved ones, though the bodies were removed hours ago. Some are there to clean the blood from the paving stones.

Some are just there to grieve for the people Paris has lost.

One of these women finds a letter laying on the paving stones, fallen from someone’s coat, no doubt.

A letter spotted with blood.

She picks it up, even though it feels like an invasion of something. Privacy. Intimacy. But she doesn’t want it lost, either. The first word and the last ones are smeared and wet and ruined, but she can make out one phrase.

_My Burning Bright Star._

The inside of the letter is mostly ruined, too, but she makes out two names. _Enjolras_ , at the top, and _Jean Prouvaire_ , at the bottom.

These two young men must have been here. They might have lived. They might have died. She doesn’t know. Though from what she heard from her window two streets over, she’s not sure much of anyone survived this barricade.

And the thought makes her cry.

The women she came with start cleaning, but before she joins them she spots something else nearby. Something the dozens of National Guard soldiers must have missed, or at least, not bothered to care about.

A leather-bound journal.

She picks that up, too, and when she does she swears she hears a gunshot echo through the air.

She jumps because there is no gunshot, there’s just the quiet, but it ricochets through her mind, and it takes her a moment to stop her hands shaking.

She certainly heard plenty of gunshots over the past few days. She heard the sound, but she couldn’t see the weapon. She was just trapped inside, waiting and wondering who was bleeding.

She finds the journal in better condition than the letter, though dirt smears the front cover.

She opens it, shooing her friend away when she calls out.

_An Ode to My friends. May history remember us, and may those who come after carry the torch should we fall._

She flips through the pages, finding poems and anecdotes and scraps of prose. Memories, she presumes, of some of the people who fought on this very barricade. The barricades are nothing new, of course. These were not the first, and they will not be the last, but they are a part of something, to her. A part of the fabric of change that pushes progress forward. Progress for people like her. Every person who fights matters, and she refuses to be cynical, and believe otherwise.

She feels the tragedy here. The loss. The violence born down on them by bayonets and gunfire and a king and disease _and and and_. The violence they were forced to perpetrate as a result.

But it does not mean they were wrong to try. They could not be anything but right.

She doesn’t know these young men, but she holds the journal to her chest anyway, and speaks four words into the future she hopes to see.

_I will remember you._


End file.
